The Sena people are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group with origins in northwestern region of Mozambique, Sofala Province and Zambezia Province. [1] [2] They are also found in Malawi [3] and Zimbabwe near their respective borders with Mozambique. [1]
The Sena people are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group with origins in northwestern region of Mozambique, Sofala Province and Zambezia Province. [1] [2] They are also found in Malawi [3] and Zimbabwe near their respective borders with Mozambique. [1]
The Sena people's total population is around 2 million. It is estimated to be about 1.4 million in Mozambique, [4] and about 0.5 million in Malawi. [5] The Sena people in Malawi and Zimbabwe arrived from Mozambique and settled there in early 20th century as migrant laborers. [1] [3]
They speak the Sena language, [6] also called Chisena or Cisena, which is part of the Bantu language family. [4] [5] The Sena language has many dialects. [4] [5]
Historically the autocephalous Sena people were those between the two large cultures of Shona people – a major ethnic group of Zimbabwe, and the Nyanja-Chewa people – a major ethnic group of Malawi and Mozambique. The Sena people have lived mainly in the Zambezi River valley. [7] According to Isaacman, the Sena represent an admix of people, exhibiting "most, though not all, of the characteristics of Shona cultural groups". [8]
After the arrival in 1498 of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on an Mozambique island in his search of a sea route to India, the colonial influence began on Sena and other ethnic groups in this part of Africa. [9] Few years later, a storm hit a caravan of the ships of his countryman Pedro Álvares Cabral trying to repeat Vasco da Gama's voyage, separating them. Some ships reached modern Brazil, where they founded a Portuguese colony. Others went around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and reached Sofala, a Mozambique trading town with a busy gold market. Their reports triggered a gold rush and a commitment by Portugal king to settle Mozambique region where many ethnic groups including the Sena people lived. [10] [9] In 1514, Antonio Fernandez confirmed there were rich goldfields in middle Zambezi valley, the traditional home of Sena people, and the Portuguese interest in colonizing this region grew. [11]
Starting with the 16th century, Portuguese traders, farmers and missionaries arrived in the Zambezi valley (stations in Sena, Tete, Zumbo, Quelimane). The Portuguese settlers built farm estates in the river valleys, working them with African labor which included the Sena people. The interaction with the Portuguese settlers since the 1500s through the contemporary times have led to the Sena people absorbing many Portuguese customs. [7] In 1531, Vicente Pegado founded a fair in a Muslim village along the Zambezi river, which then grew to become a major trading post, missionary center, colonial era garrison and market town. Pegado called this place Sena, and it is this Portuguese town after which the "Sena people" take their name. [12] [13] [14]
The gold trade was lucrative, and of interest to both Arab traders and the Portuguese. By 1542, the Arabs who were established in northeast Africa, the Horn of Africa and along the Swahili coast regions of Africa had established alternate routes for the gold, bypassing the Portuguese towns in Mozambique coast and the Island of Mozambique. [11] The Portuguese attempted to get a larger share of the gold production and trading by establishing a larger presence in the Zambesi valley and by taking aggressive military action against small Muslim controlled sultanates along the coasts of East Africa. [11] By late 16th century, particularly after Francisco Barreto 1569-1575 expedition, the Portuguese had gained control of all the major mining and trading regions along the Zambesi valley where Sena people have lived. [15]
In the 17th and 18th century, conflicts grew as did new causes for it. For example, the ivory demand and the ivory exports from Mozambique grew, followed by the demand for slaves outside Africa ravaging the Zambesi valley people as well as all others in the rivers of Sena region. [16] [17]
The violence and capture of human beings to be sold as slaves grew in late 18th century, and both Islamic and Portuguese official documents of that era refer to slaves as Kafirs. [17] Alternatively, the slaves for export were called Caporros by the Portuguese landowners inside Mozambique. [17] Over 50,000 slaves were exported from Mozambique to Brazil, the Spanish America and the French colonies before 1800. [18] This volume of slave capture and trading increased to a point where it caused major social disorder, when the governor of Mozambique issued an order to stop this abuse, curtail the movement of captured human beings, and end the slave trading that was supplying people across the Atlantic Ocean. In August 1792, states Capela, the Mozambique governor issued an order that, "no more Kafirs will be exported from the Rivers of Sena". [17]
In the 19th century, the descendants of the colonial Portuguese who had been so far been farm and plantation owners using Sena people and other African labor en masse shifted into slave trading, particularly to the South American colonies of Portugal. [17] Initially they sold captured human beings as slaves, later they started selling African men and women from their own farms. Larger operations of Prazos da Zambezia included operating ships and slave voyages, and many ports and ships from Mozambique catered to this trade. These operations were run by both genders, the Portuguese men and women. [17] Official documents of the Governor-general Joaquim Pereira Marinho from 1840-1841 period state everyone was involved in this slave trading operations, from Portuguese to Moors, women of all ages, clergymen, civilians and soldiers in the Portuguese colony; it also describes how mujojos, or "dark Moors" would invade to steal slaves and export them from different ports and the Island of Mozambique. [17]
The human abuse through slave capture and trading created increasing conflicts in Africa, as well as protests within Europe. Britain withdrew from slave trade, Brazil abolished slave imports in 1831, and by 1860s most major slave markets of the world had abolished slavery. [19] These developments stabilized the lives and family units of the Sena people and other ethnic groups in the Zambesi valley as well as the rest of Africa. During the scramble for Africa the weakened Portuguese crown leased this region to British companies, which built the railway connections between the Indian Ocean and their colonies, in this case the TZR, Trans-Zambezi-Railway, between Beira and Njassaland/Malawi via Sena.[ citation needed ] Once Portugal under Salazar during the 1940s had gained control over the region, then it introduced forced cotton growing and forced labor "contracts" with British colonies.[ citation needed ]
According to Kevin Shillington, Portuguese colonisation of the region developed from about 1505 through the 19th century, but it was never accepted by Sena people and other Africans. They resisted it, often with disruptions and sometimes with wars. [20] Portuguese attempted various methods to subjugate, such as by sending religious missions in the 16th century to convert the people into cooperative Catholics, but the members of such missions were suspected of bad intentions and killed. [20] Through the 18th century, Portugal partially succeeded in controlling the Zambesi river valley by granting Portuguese settlers imperial rights over the land with Portuguese military protection, with the settler-landowner called Prazeiro had the right to tax and exploit local people as labor, in exchange for tribute payments. Rebellions were common, but sporadic and lacked cohesion between various ethnic groups including the Sena, Tonga and Tawara peoples and sometimes within the same ethnic group. [20]
By the middle of the 19th century, Achikunda slave armies emerged that would capture, kidnap and sell human beings as slaves for export. This period saw a period of Scramble for Africa in Mozambique, with Portugal sending in more military might to assert its powers, funding this by increased local taxation and forced labor called Chibalo. [20] This triggered further violence against the Portuguese. Starting with 1884, the people staged a series of violent rebellions against the Portuguese. In 1897, the Portuguese attempted to collect an annual and steep "hut tax" from Africans, along with conscription of 2,000 African males for work, which the Sena people along with Tonga and Cambuenda peoples violently opposed. [20] The Portuguese officials responded with military might, arrests and forced transfers of the local people into South African mines and South Rhodesian plantations between 1900 and about 1960, when a nationwide FRELIMO resistance congealed to overthrow the Portuguese rule and gain independence. [20]
Mozambique gained independence in 1975, and the Sena people participated in the struggle for independence. Post-independence the ethnic groups failed to agree on constitution and laws for self-rule, expansion of its goal to liberate other parts of southern Africa where same ethnic group was under oppression such as Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), and they were a party to and suffered the wars such as with Rhodesia and then during a civil war between RENAMO and FRELIMO. [21]
Sena people have been geographically distributed in a hot humid region. The heat means they traditionally wore few clothes, the women were bare-breasted and wore nsalu or chitenje cloth, which is a wrap around. [22] Showing bare legs has been culturally considered as immodest, and both men and women try to keep it covered. During community dances, such as the Nyau dance, however, they wear very little clothing. [22]
Sena people converted to Catholicism in bulk during the colonial era under the influence of Portuguese Christian missionaries, [23] but some of the Sena people of Mozambique have held on to traditional beliefs in polygamy, child marriage and tribal religious practices. Their occupations have included farming, fishing and migrant labor. [22] The Churches operating among the Sena people use an Africanized version of the Bible, and they ignore other versions. The version of Bible used by the Sena people, states Rhodian G. Munyenyembe, is the Buku Lopatulika, an old Chichewa version of the Bible. [24] Traditionally, death rituals have been burials. Similar to neighboring ethnic groups in Mozambique, wedding among Sena people of river valley regions required a brideprice called lobolo which was a payment made to the family of the bride to compensate them for the loss of her work output in her birth home. [25]
Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the southwest. The sovereign state is separated from the Comoros, Mayotte and Madagascar by the Mozambique Channel to the east. The capital and largest city is Maputo.
Mozambique was a Portuguese colony, overseas province and later a member state of Portugal. It gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bordered to the north by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the core economic hubs of the country.
The history of Zambia experienced many stages from colonisation to independence from Britain on 24 October 1964. Northern Rhodesia became a British sphere of influence in the present-day region of Zambia in 1888, and was officially proclaimed a British protectorate in 1924. After many years of suggested mergers, Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland were merged into the British Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
Portuguese Mozambique or Portuguese East Africa were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese overseas province. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a string of Portuguese possessions along the south-east African coast, and later became a unified province, which now forms the Republic of Mozambique.
Chinde is a town of Mozambique, and a port for the Zambezi valley. It is located on the Chinde River, and is an important fishing center. It exports copra and sugar, and had a population of 16,500 in 1980. Chinde lies in Chinde District of Zambezia Province.
The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. Its drainage basin covers 1,390,000 km2 (540,000 sq mi), slightly less than half of the Nile's. The 2,574 km (1,599 mi) river rises in Zambia and flows through eastern Angola, along the north-eastern border of Namibia and the northern border of Botswana, then along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe to Mozambique, where it crosses the country to empty into the Indian Ocean.
The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from visits made by David Livingstone from 1858 onward during his exploration of the Zambezi area. This encouraged missionary activity that started in the 1860s, undertaken by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland, and which was followed by a small number of settlers. The Portuguese government attempted to claim much of the area in which the missionaries and settlers operated, but this was disputed by the British government. To forestall a Portuguese expedition claiming effective occupation, a protectorate was proclaimed, first over the south of this area, then over the whole of it in 1889. After negotiations with the Portuguese and German governments on its boundaries, the protectorate was formally ratified by the British government in May 1891.
The Kingdom of Mutapa – sometimes referred to as the Mutapa Empire, Mwenemutapa, – was an African kingdom in Zimbabwe, which expanded to what is now modern-day Mozambique, Botswana, Malawi, and Zambia.
Sofala is a province of Mozambique. It has a population of 2,259,248. Beira is the capital of the province, named for the ruined port of Sofala which is 35 kilometres (22 mi) to the south.
The Makua people, also known as Makhuwa or Wamakua, are a Bantu ethnic group found in northern Mozambique and the southern border provinces of Tanzania such as the Mtwara Region. They are the largest ethnic group in Mozambique, and primarily concentrated in a large region to the north of the Zambezi River.
The Ndau are a ethnic group. The name "Ndau" means Land. Just like the Manyika people in northern Manicaland, their name Manyika also meaning "Owners of the Land", the name Ndau means Land. E.g "Ndau yedu" meaning "our land" When the Ngoni observed this, they called them the Ndau people, the name itself meaning the land, the place or the country in their language. A traditional outsider suggestion is that the name is derived from the Nguni words "Amading'indawo" which means "those looking for a place" as this is what the Gaza Nguni called them and the name then evolved to Ndau. However, they are described in detail to have already been occupying parts of Zimbabwe and Mozambique in 1500s by the Portuguese missionary Joao dos Santos. The five largest Ndau groups are the Magova; the Mashanga; the Vatomboti, the Madanda and the Teve. Ancient Ndau People met with the Khoi/San during the first trade with the Arabs at Mapungumbwe and its attributed to the Kalanga, Venda, Shona, and Ndau peoples. They traded with Arabs with "Mpalu", "Njeti" and "Vukotlo" these are the red, white and blue coloured cloths together with golden beads. Ndau people traded traditional herbs, spiritual powers, animal skins and bones.
Gazaland is the historical name for the region in southeast Africa, in modern-day Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which extends northward from the Komati River at Delagoa Bay in Mozambique's Maputo Province to the Pungwe River in central Mozambique.
A prazo in Portuguese Africa was a large estate leased to colonists, settlers and traders to exploit the continent's resources. Prazos operated like semi-feudal entities and were most commonly found in the Zambezi River valley.
The Pink Map, also known as the Rose-Coloured Map, was a map prepared in 1885 to represent the Kingdom of Portugal's claim of sovereignty over a land corridor connecting the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique during the Scramble for Africa. The area claimed included most of modern-day Zimbabwe and large parts of modern-day Zambia and Malawi.
The Gaza Empire (1824–1895) was an African empire established by general Soshangane and was located in southeastern Africa in the area of southern Mozambique and southeastern Zimbabwe. The Gaza Empire, at its height in the 1860s, covered all of Mozambique between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, known as Gazaland.
Maganja da Costa District is a district of Zambezia Province in Mozambique.
Chikunda, sometimes rendered as Achicunda, was the name given from the 18th century onwards to the slave-warriors of the Afro-Portuguese estates known as Prazos in Zambezia, Mozambique. They were used to defend the prazos and police their inhabitants. Many of the chikunda were originally chattel slaves, raised to the status of soldiers, traders or administrators of parts of the prazo as a client or unfree dependent.
The Makololo chiefs recognised by the governments of colonial Nyasaland and independent Malawi have their origin in a group of porters that David Livingstone brought from Barotseland in the 1850s to support his first Zambezi expedition that did not return to Barotseland but assisted Livingstone and British missionaries in the area of southern Malawi between 1859 and 1864. After the withdrawal of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa those Makololo remaining in the Shire valley used firearms provided by the Europeans to attract dependants seeking protection, to seize land and to establish a number of chieftainships. At the time that a British protectorate was established in 1891, there were seven Makololo chiefs of which six were recognised by the government. Five survived to be given local governmental powers in 1933, and these powers continued after Malawi became independent. Although called Makololo or Kololo, after the ruling group in Barotseland in the 1850s, the majority came from peoples subject to the Makololo who adopted the more prestigious name. As, regardless of their origin, they took wives from among the inhabitants of the Shire Valley, their modern descendants have little connection with the Kololo people apart from their name.
Allen Isaacman is an American historian specializing in the social history of Southern Africa. He is a Regents Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. In 2015, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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